Latest Schools to Upgrade to 25Live

Rio Hondo College Hofstra University Catawba College Lewis-Clark State College Barton County Community College Columbia-Greene Community College Northampton Community College Wayne Community College

Southwestern Illinois College Lehigh Carbon Community College Cape Cod Community College Rockland Community College Georgia College & State University Lakeland Community College Western Iowa Tech Community College Illinois Valley Community College

Upgrading to the 25Live®all-in-one scheduling system makes course and event scheduling, resource management, and campus-wide calendaring easier and more efficient. With 25Live, the courses and events you schedule can be automatically posted to calendars campus wide. You can view and update calendars from anywhere you have internet access, assign event-specific tasks, reserve equipment and other resources, and more!

Learn more about the 25Live system here.

Latest Schools to License CollegeNET Series25 Products

Moravian College College of Eastern Idaho Otis College of Art and Design Milwaukee School of Engineering

Ramapo College of New Jersey Medical University of South Carolina D'Youville College SUNY Orange County Community College

Series25® is the all-in-one, mobile-accessible solution for making administrative tasks faster, simpler and more effective. It provides a complete set of advanced tools for optimizing classroom and event scheduling, space and resource management, and web calendar publishing, as well as master planning and reporting. 

Learn more about Series25 products here.

Fifth Annual Social Mobility Index (SMI) Highlights Performance and Pitfalls as Attention to Social Mobility Grows Among US Colleges and Universities

The 2018 Social Mobility Index (SMI) -- a measurement of US higher education's commitment to growing opportunity and success for economically disadvantaged students -- has identified several consistently high-ranking institutions, based on how effectively they are helping low-income students attend college and graduate into well-paying jobs.

“Unlike other college rankings that are aimed primarily at helping students select a college,” says Jim Wolfston, CEO of CollegeNET, “the SMI helps policymakers determine which colleges are addressing the national problem of economic mobility. Administrators have a better chance to help strengthen US economic mobility and the promise of the American Dream if they can identify and learn from colleges that are skilled at doing this.”

According to the 2018 SMI, several such leading institutions include:

• Baruch College, which ranked #1 in the SMI for the fourth consecutive year
• UC and CSU schools, which dominated the rankings, accounting for more than half of the SMI top 20 for the second consecutive year
• The CUNY System in New York City, which placed five schools in the SMI top 20

The 2018 data also highlighted pitfalls for universities looking to improve their social mobility. From the 1,350 schools benchmarked in 2018:

• Seventeen schools now charge higher annual tuition than their graduates’ median five-year salary
• At least 50 institutions award over half their Pell Grants to richer families
• The percentage of Pell Grants awarded to richer families has continued to climb

“Higher Education is the most important asset in the Learning Age,” says Wolfston. “If we can distribute this vital asset across the economic spectrum, we can optimize our nation’s human capital development, prepare the next generation for citizenship and ensure social and economic opportunity. Most importantly, by rejecting the current trend toward on-campus economic homogeneity, a higher education institution can offer its students the chance to encounter a more challenging mix of people with diverse ideas, perspectives and backgrounds. Collisions with the unexpected and unfamiliar are what best sharpen and prepare innovative minds. Thus, economic inclusion is not only a solution to a social justice issue, it is an optimizing strategy for training tomorrow’s innovators.”

For more information about the SMI and the 2018 SMI rankings, visit www.socialmobilityindex.org.

Kent State Grad Admissions System Improves Communication and Efficiency

Kent State had been using an email-based admissions system that was wasteful and inefficient. The process was confusing and frustrating for applicants (who had to wait weeks after each document submission to see updates to their applications) as well as faculty (who couldn’t access information about in-progress applications or help applicants along the way). Many students who found the application process confusing, too slow, or too difficult to navigate simply abandoned their applications. 

According to Ms. Whitehead, “the old admissions process consumed hundreds of hours of administrative time, in addition to reams and reams of paper. Our applicants would email all their documents, which we would then print out, write on, scan, and then move into each student’s electronic file.” After that process, faculty were notified via email that a completed file was ready for review. The vast majority of programs would then print all the documents all over again in order to make their decisions. The process typically took several weeks and sometimes months. The administration wanted to find a suite of admissions products that would provide more tools and flexibility to help manage all of Kent State’s graduate programs, improve communication with applicants, and provide a better overall experience for applicants, faculty reviewers, and administrators.

The ApplyWeb integrated system immediately streamlined Kent State’s entire admissions process, eliminating printing, scanning and filing, while adding all the customizing features the school needed to manage their complex graduate curriculum. According to Whitehead, moving to an all-in-one application processing and CRM system was a big improvement. “Because we have all the pieces of the system, when we’re adding a new program into the application, it’s easy to add it into Admin and ensure the right application requirements are associated with the program. We can do the whole thing in five minutes.” And administrators can track applicants’ progress and have direct, immediate communication with them. Now, the Admissions office can generate detailed reports in minutes. Faculty can view in-progress applications and reach out to promising students to encourage completion. And applicants can see their real-time status anytime they want, instead of waiting weeks for an email update that may already be outdated. The improved application experience was immediately obvious: Kent State Admissions saw a 14 percent reduction in incomplete applications within the first full semester of adopting the ApplyWeb system, and a 21 percent reduction by the following term. 

“Another huge benefit to our new system is improved usability and convenience for our faculty,” says Whitehead. All faculty review committee members now have access to a single, scrollable PDF of applicant documents wherever and whenever they want. Although, the best part is that we’ve been able to empower our faculty, giving them ways to identify and reach out to promising applicants. We can also remind faculty and deans when they have applications waiting for review. This helps move decisions along and gets offers out more quickly, so we can truly impact enrollment.”

CollegeNET Hosts the 2018 User Conference: “Innovation at the Boundaries of Benefit”

The annual CollegeNET User Conference took place this July in Portland, Oregon, with close to 500 participants and attendees from higher education institutions around the country. The four-day conference offered 125 demonstrations, workshops, and seminars presented by CollegeNET employees and customers. Attendees saw the latest products and features in action, received hands-on training from CollegeNET developers, and heard helpful advice and inspiring case studies presented by colleagues. As in years past, CollegeNET also treated attendees to the sights and culture of the beautiful Pacific Northwest with a variety of tours, activities and local entertainment.

Comments from this year’s attendees included:

"The annual conference was, once again, glorious! Way to go!"

“The social events were very well thought out, put-together, and I greatly enjoyed and appreciated the experience! From a schedulers point of view, CollegeNET did a great job putting together these events!”

“This was the most meaningful and relevant conference I have been to this year. GREAT JOB!”

The next CollegeNET User Conference is scheduled for July 28-31, 2019. Registration opens in February at: corp.collegenet.com

2018 Social Mobility Summit Convenes in Portland, July 11-12

The annual Social Mobility Summit brings student success professionals from colleges and universities across the country to share best practices for supporting student success in higher education.

The goal of the Social Mobility Summit is to address one of the most pressing issues of our time: higher education's role in advancing social mobility in order to stem the growing economic disparity in our country. The two-day event includes round table discussions and individual presentations on methods for best educating economically disadvantaged students and preparing them to succeed beyond college, and for getting communities and legislators on board.

Each of the professionals participating in the Summit has their own story to tell about their groundbreaking programs and initiatives for supporting student success. CollegeNET is pleased to host these innovators as they share their ideas and concerns, and help them have a voice beyond their institutions.

Participating institutions:

Baruch College, New York
California State University, Northridge
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Rutgers University, New Jersey
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Santa Cruz
Wichita State University, Kansas
Winston-Salem State University, North Carolina

For more information contact:
jill@collegenet.com

College Educators Share Insights and Best Practices for Supporting Social Mobility

CollegeNET invited student success leaders across the country to discuss higher education's role in narrowing the socio-economic gap in today's society. In this eBook collection of essays, higher education professionals who head innovative student success programs at their institutions discuss the challenges of identifying and supporting the needs of under-served students. And they share highlights of their innovative approaches to helping these students succeed in college, obtain four-year degrees, and to on to well-paying jobs.

The publication, Social Mobility through Higher Education, includes articles by Baruch College President Dr. Mitchel Wallerstein; UC Irvine Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning Dr. Michael Dennin; Winston-Salem State University Chancellor Dr. Elwood Robinson; and UC Santa Cruz Vice Provost for Student Success Dr. Jaye Padgett. The publication also includes a concluding essay by CollegeNET CEO Jim Wolfston.

Educators Gather for a Day Focused on Student Success

On Feb. 26, the University of California, Santa Cruz, a 2017 Social Mobility Innovator, hosted a symposium on equity and social mobility through higher education. Leaders in higher education came together to share and explore data-driven best practices to support student success.

The full-day program included keynote addresses by UC Santa Cruz Professor Chris Benner, UC Davis Professor Marco Molinaro, and CollegeNET CEO Jim Wolfston, in addition to panel discussions, and individual presentations by:

●      Debra Griffith, Associate Vice President for Transition and Retention Services, San Jose State

●      Rebecca London, Assistant Professor, Sociology, UC Santa Cruz

●      Pablo Reguerín, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Achievement and Equity Innovation, UC Santa Cruz

●      Rebecca Covarrubias, Assistant Professor, Psychology, UC Santa Cruz

The UC Santa Cruz symposium was co-sponsored by CollegeNET, Inc., developers of the Social Mobility Index (SMI), a data driven ranking that evaluates US colleges and university according to how well they perform at admitting and supporting the success of economically disadvantaged students. For more information about the SMI and the 2017 SMI rankings, visit www.socialmobilityindex.org.

Celebrating Social Mobility through Higher Education

The University of California, Irvine, a 2017 Social Mobility Innovator, recently hosted a symposium on facilitating social mobility in higher education. The symposium featured panels of faculty experts, practitioners, and UCI students and alumni discussing the importance of social mobility in defining student success in higher education.

Dr. Michael Dennin, Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning
and Dean of the Division of Undergraduate Education at UCI

UCI Students and Alumni

Attendees applauded the speakers and panelists both at the symposium and in the Twittersphere.

“For way too long, and still too often, elite higher ed in this county is about the reproduction of privilege, more than it has been about the creation of opportunity." - @UCIrvine Chancellor Howard Gillman (At an event put on by @UCIovptl and @CollegeNET about #SocialMobiity) pic.twitter.com/kO73rove2z

— Ryan Foland #SMMW18 (@ryanfoland) February 14, 2018